DID RIGDON FOREKNOW THE COMING AND CONTENTS OF THE BOOK OF MORMON?
This question is more worthy of consideration than the last, because associated with it is a man of character, Alexander Campbell. In the Millennial Harbinger of 1844, at page 39, is a letter quoted by Mr. Schroeder, bearing date of January 22, 1841, from Adamson Bently, in which the following passage occurs:
"I know that Sidney Rigdon told me there was a book coming out, the manuscript of which had been found engraved on gold plates, as much as two years before the Mormon book made its appearance or had been heard of by me."
It must be remembered that Bently and Rigdon married sisters, that they had family troubles in respect of property, as already explained,[127] and were rival preachers, all which would go far to discredit Bently's charge if his charge stood by itself. Alexander Campbell, however, was the editor of the Millennial Harbinger at this time, and in an editorial note on the above mentioned letter, lays the weight of his unqualified confirmation upon it. He says:
[Footnote 127: See note 52, etc., and Evening and Morning Star, p. 301, ante p. 127.]
"The conversation alluded to in Brother Bently's letter of 1841 was in my presence as well as in his, and my recollection of it led me some two or three years ago, to interrogate Brother Bently touching his recollections of it, which accorded with mine in every particular except the year in which it occurred, he placing it in the summer of 1827, I, in the summer of 1826, Rigdon at the same time observing that in the plates dug up in New York there was an account not only of the aborigines of this country, but also it was stated that the Christian religion had been preached in this country during the first century just as we were preaching it on the Western Reserve."